The present invention relates to automotive vehicle structures and, more particularly, to the vehicle floor pan and structures supported thereby.
Automotive vehicle structures are often subjected to large forces during use such as result from crossing road bumps at higher vehicle speeds, traversing road turns at higher vehicle speeds, and undergoing larger accelerations. Such forces will distort the original floor pan shape and vehicle body shape in twisting these vehicle structures.
Such structural distortions result in temporarily repositioning the various operating systems in the vehicle supported by these structures. Such system repositionings result in the systems operating differently from what the automobile designers intended as, for instance, the axes about which the suspension system components operate shifting their relative orientations temporarily making the vehicle difficult to keep where desired on the road during such events. Thus, there is a desire to stabilize the vehicle structures in the face of occurrences of such forces.